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Finishing Services encompass a range of primarily metal related services that cover various treatments, coatings, and processes that are applied to, or deposited on, substrates to provide corrosion protection, improve surface characteristics, remove contaminates or machining detritus, etc. The services apply to plastics and other materials in many cases also.

Finishing services can be loosely divided into three groups. Treatment services impart changes in the metal structure of surfaces through applications of heat and quenching or through mechanical working of surfaces by impingement. Coating services include coverings such as anodizing and plating where material is added to surfaces; it includes as well printing and marking. The third group generally uses abrasive techniques to remove minute layers of surfaces to make them smoother, flatter, etc.; this group could also include cleaning, which, while sometimes an abrasive process, does not have to be.

Some finishing services are particularly suited to being handled by specialized firms. Heat treating and plating, for instance, are almost invariably contracted out by most machine shops due to the batch nature of the processes and the need to maintain an array of furnaces, quenching baths, or vats of hazardous chemicals. Other services such as deburring can frequently be handled manually by in house labor but in large lots can benefit from automated processes that some service providers offer.